When an invitation to dine as a guest at the restaurant presented itself a couple of weeks ago, it was the needed nudge that finally got me in the doors.

And boy, have I been missing out.

The lively restaurant in Hayes Valley is almost always packed, especially before nearby theater performances with folks grabbing a most civilized meal before racing off to the ballet or symphony.

Executive Chef Adam Keogh, who has cooked at Chez TJ in Mountain View and at a couple of Michael Mina Group restaurants, infuses classic French brasserie sensibilities with California flair to come up with menu items such as Atkins Ranch lamb sugo over papardelle ($22); spicy fried chickpeas ($4); and beef tartare ($16) with violet mustard, green apple and red onion.

The restaurant is made up of several plush rooms, done up with burgundy walls sporting gold trim. There’s a large mural in one, depicting the inside of a dining room restaurant complete with servers and tables of diners. At the entrance to the kitchen, there’s even a small toque painted above, appropriately enough.

When a restaurant is named for a once illegal spirit, you’ve just got to order a cocktail, don’t you? Absinthe has long been famed for its well-executed cocktails.

Such was the case last week at One Market restaurant in San Francisco, when resident Chef Mark Dommen invited Chef Staffan Terje of Perbacco in San Francisco to cook with him on a multi-course feast that was all about goat.

I was lucky enough to be invited as a guest to the dinner, which kicked off with Terje’s spectacular goat leg tartare. The mild red meat got a hit of crunch from diced celery heart, a pop of salinity from Cantabrian anchovy and floral acidity from preserved Meyer lemons.

Dommen lobbed with goat liver terrine and goat mortadella with fresh apricots and apricot mustardo. It was the type of food that made you wish you were on a picnic in the south of France.

The event is a benefit for Family House, which provides a home away from home for families with children undergoing cancer treatment at UCSF Children’s Hospital.

General admission tickets are $100; VIP tickets are $175 (which gives you access to the party one hour early, plus entrance into the VIP lounge and cigarillo bar, and a digital swag bag). Food Gal readers can get a special discount: $90 for general admission tickets or $160 for VIP tickets. Just use the code: FOODGAL. Deadline for the discount is midnight June 18.

Presidio Social Club Celebrates Father’s Day with A Grand Pig Roast

On Father’s Day, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. June 17, the restaurant will host its sixth annual “Pig Roast Soiree.” Not one, but two Yosemite Valley pigs will be roasted on the back patio in Caja China box grills.

Take a close look at the artwork on this 27-year-old’s arms and you’ll understand what’s near and dear to this chef of San Francisco’s Boxing Room.

On the right arm of this Southern Louisiana native is a tiny front-page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. That’s accompanied by all the makings for a crawfish boil (potatoes, crawfish and crab) and the Cajun ”holy trinity” of onion, bell peppers and celery.

On his left arm is the cityscape of New Orleans, the bayou and gravestones of dearly departed ones.

At the Boxing Room, part of the Absinthe Group of restaurants in San Francisco, Simoneaux cooks up the food of his beloved Louisiana: gumbo, deep-fried alligator, Southern fried chicken, and duck and sausage jambalaya. Before that, he honed his skills in Mediterranean cuisine at Coco500 in San Francisco, and the Moss Room at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Last week, I had a chance to sit down with him to talk about how his roots and his upbringing (his mother was only 18 when she gave birth to him) have influenced his career, which started when he took a job as a dishwasher at age 15 at a restaurant near his high school.

Q: Are you cooking the food of your childhood here?

A: It’s the food I grew up eating, but I’m using my training to better the recipes. Don’t tell my Mom and Grandma I said that.

Q: You learned how to cook from them?

A: In Louisiana, everything centers around food. My Mom and Granny made gumbo and stews. My grandfather boiled crawfish and did a lot of grilling. I’d always be like, ‘Ooh, what is that smell?’ I was intrigued from an early age.

Q: Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

A: When I worked as a dishwasher, then as a line cook, I just fell in love with the adrenaline and energy. I came out here for culinary school (California Culinary Academy) with the intention of going back to Louisiana afterward. But I’ve been here seven years now and love it. I feel like I have two homes now.

Q: When you go back to Louisiana to visit, is there something you just make a beeline for that you’ve just got to eat first?

Imagine the rolling carts and trays of Chinese dim sum. But instead of small dishes of chicken feet and traditional steamed dumplings, you have have the likes of smoked duck fingerling potato salad, ricotta pancakes with sauerkraut, and green garlic bread with burrata.

That’s the concept of the very inventive State Bird Provisions, steps away from San Francisco’s Japantown.

Husband-and-wife chefs Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski got the idea for this after catering private events upon their departure from their posts as head chef and pastry chef, respectively, at San Francisco’s Rubicon, after that landmark restaurant shuttered. They realized that diners these days like to graze, rather than always commit to the usual appetizer, entree and dessert. And they noticed that when a new dish is paraded in front of folks, they just have to have at it once they see it.